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THE MEANING 
OF LIFE 



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I. THE MEANING OF LIFE 

THE meaning of Life! A man who 
elects to write on such a subject 
must take his courage in both hands. 
For it will be his business to attack grave 
questions on which there is much controversy, 
and to lay down propositions which are little 
likely to please everybody. If he discusses 
problems so serious and fundamental as those 
which deal with Duty and Happiness and the 
Existence of Evil: if he raises his eyes to the 
heavens and asks what are we to think about 
God ; or looking around him asks what is the 
essential constitution of the universe, he must 
acquit himself as best he can, with abundance 
of modesty, some knowledge, and perhaps 



%with 



,ci 



with no little humour. And we cannot all 
attain to such a combination of gifts. 
^s I take it that there is one indispensable basis 
on which we must rest the edifice we are try- 
ing to build. We must found our theories on 
Philosophy, because without such philo- 
sophical foundations our theories, whether at- 
tractive or the reverse, will be floating in the 
air, baseless and therefore uncertain. The 
first task we must set about then, is a philo- 
sophical discussion, which, so far as possible, 
must be treated without technical apparatus 
of abstruse terms, with simplicity, and I hope, 
with common sense. For myself in this mat- 
ter, I have a personal reason. When a man is 
well advanced in the vale of years, he ought 
to be able to give an account of the faith which 
is in him, based on and tested by his own ex- 
perience. Whether it is likely to be useful to 
others, is a dubious matter. But assuredly it 
will be useful to himself. 

II. WHAT PHILOSOPHY MEANS 

% I WONDER what most people think is the 
value of Philosophy. It seems to be gener- 
ally supposed that only mediaeval thinkers, or 
at all events those who are medievally minded, 
2 



occupy themselves with metaphysics and that 
the triumph of modern science and of that 
system of Positivism founded on it by Comte, 
has finally banished all word-spinning 
fallacies and fantastic dreams about essences 
and inner verities and the "quiddities" of 
things into an unfathomable limbo of neglect 
and derision. 

% Of course, it depends on what we mean by 
Philosophy. If Philosophy is a kind of rival 
science, then it is clear that the success of the 
one patronised by modern students — that is, 
empirical science — must mean the defeat and 
ignominy of all other pretenders to the throne. 
But Philosophy is not a science at all in the 
technical sense and it could only have signi- 
fied anything of the sort at a time when the 
philosopher thought it his business to explain 
the constitution of matter and the origin of the 
world. What is the philosopher? Plato tells 
us that he is "the spectator of all Time and all 
Existence," but then Plato was a little inclined 
to exaggerate the claims of his own idealistic 
creed. Let us try to arrive at a more modest 
estimate. 

% I suppose that apart from all the various 

branches of Science, which grow out in all 

3 % directions, 



directions, there might well be a parent 
science or discipline, just as there is a parent 
tree. In nature the trunk supplies the 
branches with the sap of life, which in the 
last resort comes out of the fertilising wealth 
of the Earth. In what sense can Philosophy 
then supply something fructifying and vital 
to the separate sciences? It certainly cannot 
give them the material on which they work, 
because each science possesses its own subject 
matter with which it deals by its appropriate 
methods of analysis and inductive research. 
But though it cannot add to their store of 
data (if it did, it would be a rival science) 
Philosophy can yet supply principles, ulti- 
mate notions, administrative and governing 
ideas. Whether scientific people are in- 
clined to accept these principles at the hands 
of Philosophy, is quite a different matter. 
So far as I am acquainted with them, they 
spurn and reject the offer; they assert that 
each science must work in its own way, and 
that perhaps the most important instrument 
of all is a properly organised scientific method 
which no Philosophy could give or has given 
them. 



III. WANTED— A WORLD 

THEORY 
<% WELL then, we must attack the subject 
in another way. As human beings we want 
to become possessed of the Art of Life. In 
other words, we desire to have a working 
theory which will help us in making the best 
of our three-score years and ten. We are con- 
scious of a sensitive and emotional organisa- 
tion, and therefore we must know how to 
regulate our feelings, our pleasures, our 
spiritual energies, our faiths and ideals, in 
order to make the best of them — to force them 
to contribute to the adequate satisfaction of 
our nature. But besides this — which might 
conceivably be formulated into a mechanical 
system of rules and ordinances — we have an 
intellectual organisation which imperatively 
bids us to try and understand the why and the 
wherefore. We look before and after: we 
would fain carry out the struggle of existence, 
as the Greek warriors desired to carry out 
their struggle against the Trojans, not 
shrouded in mists and clouds, but in the clear 
light of day. We crave to know. But how 
are we to compass this difficult matter? Who 
will show us any good? 

5 %What 



% What is it precisely we want? We want 
a world-theory. And this is what none of 
the sciences can give us. They may perhaps 
assure us that they can; and when we are ask- 
ing how best to save our souls, they may tell 
us of the Conservation of Energy and the 
Survival of the Fittest, offering us instead of 
the bread we need the hard stones — rudis 
indigestaque moles — of Matter and Force and 
Natural Uniformity. Also they will assure us 
that they have a world-theory, which goes by 
the names of Materialism, or Positivism or 
Naturalism. Strictly interpreted, Material- 
ism means that out of matter comes all life, 
matter containing, as Tyndall said, "the prom- 
ise and potency of all existence." All con- 
cepts, thoughts, sensations ; all spiritual states 
and moods of high emotion; all ethical and re- 
ligious ideas are the result of matter in motion, 
excitations set up in the cortical area of the 
brain in response to external stimuli. But 
do they mean that there is a causal relation 
between material atoms in motion and our con- 
scious states? That causal relation can never 
be proved. Possibly you might prove 
equivalence between the two, so that from one 
6 



aspect you can talk of mental processes, while 
from another aspect you might refer to mov- 
ing molecules. But that theory does not 
favour the materialist programme, for it 
admits that all that we mean by consciousness 
is sui generis and possesses an independent 
vitality of its own. The fact is that as soon as 
the man of science deserts his own peculiar 
province — the phenomenal view of things, the 
relations of phenomena to one another — and 
tries to explain reality as exhibited in matter 
and energy, he begins, whether he is aware of 
it or not, to talk metaphysics and to put on the 
long robe of the philosopher. And he carries 
the robe very awkwardly! 

IV. INSISTENT QUESTIONS 

% IT would seem therefore that we have 
to go to Philosophy if we want a World- 
theory. Just because Philosophy is not con- 
cerned with concrete details or even with 
abstract conceptions as to the behaviour of 
matter and energy under certain conditions, 
but is concerned with underlying and ultimate 
principles, we turn to it, when we desire to 
know the things that count. Ah, but what are 
7 %the 



the things that count? And how can we be 
sure that Philosophy speaks truly in such mat- 
ters? 

% Let us interrogate ourselves, in the first 
place, on the great, constant cravings of Hu- 
manity, the permanent and perpetual needs of 
self-conscious beings, full of curiosity and 
able to torture themselves if their wants — in- 
tellectual, moral and religious — are unsatis- 
fied. These ultimate problems torture us just 
in proportion as we are not mere animals. 
We can carry out our lives on the animal level 
without much worry. We can eat, drink, 
amuse ourselves, and so long as we are careful 
about some elementary laws of hygiene, we 
can pursue our path with very fair success 
from the cradle to the grave. But then to 
human beings come those "obstinate question- 
ings," of which Wordsworth wrote. We are 
not satisfied with the passive, unimaginative 
process involved in sleeping and eating and 
chewing the cud of comfortable repletion. It 
is necessary for us in practising the Art of 
Life to ask questions. It is necessary — for the 
peace and quiet of our minds — to try to know. 
Many problems crowd into our consciousness 
and demand some solution. Let us take some 
8 



of the most insistent of these, as they affect our 
consciousness of ourselves and our conception 
of the world. 

% (I.) In the first place, what am I? a com- 
posite thing obviously, made up out of bodily 
organs, senses, nerves, feelings, thoughts. Yes, 
but what am I? Where resides my person- 
ality? Is that which makes my individuality 
this body of mine? Or is it something else — 
my soul or spirit, however defined, the basis 
of my emotional, imaginative, thinking, self- 
conscious life? Where resides the ego? In 
bodily structure or in the conscious mind? I 
am not happy till I have settled — for myself 
at all events — this point. Nor can anyone 
even begin to construct an Art of Life, until 
he has reached some solution, either provi- 
sional, or final, of this problem. If a man be 
mainly corporeal, then he must live in one way. 
If he be mainly spiritual, then he must live in 
another way. You cannot serve God and 
Mammon. 

% (II.) No, you cannot serve God at all, un- 
less you also make up your mind as to another 
kindred difficulty. Descartes, who thought he 
had located the soul in the pineal gland, — 
which was only another way of making it 
% material, — 



material, — leant to the conclusion that human 
beings were automata. Indeed I am not sure 
that the physical sciences do not practically 
favour such a conclusion. We are part of the 
uniform order of Nature, evolved out of lower 
organisms, with an unbroken chain connecting 
the highest development of man's self-con- 
scious vitality with the dim restlessness of 
amoeba. We are borne along the torrent of 
the "elan vital," together with everything else 
in the Kosmos of things, helpless to resist, 
driving towards some unknown goal. For all 
practical purposes, then, we are automata, act- 
ing automatically because some obscure force 
holds the strings which make the puppets 
dance to tunes which they do not originate but 
obey. But that is an almost intolerable con- 
ception which we can only accept under the 
severest compulsion. Are we in reality mere 
slaves, or have we some freedom to stand out- 
side, as it were, of the physical prison-house? 
And if we are not free to some recognisable 
extent, how comes it that we talk about our 
duty and our responsibility and the ethical 
code which we have imposed on ourselves? 
The ethical law is "I must because I can." 
It is not "I will because I cannot help myself." 
10 



And if we are not free, what is the good of 
even thinking about an Art of Life, which in- 
volves forethought and selection and self-con- 
scious direction towards a determined end? 
^ (III.) Another matter can be referred to 
in briefer fashion. I am a self-conscious be- 
ing with various desires and ambitions and 
with a definite personality of my own. But I 
do not stand alone. Around me, whatever 
may be my station in life, there are a number 
of other beings, each possessed of a person- 
ality, and each a mass of more or less intelli- 
gent cupidities. Now, in carrying out my 
career, I have either to please them or my- 
self. They are in my way, if I am ambitious. 
I am equally an obstacle to them, if they are 
ambitious. It is all very well to suggest a 
compromise, but Charity begins at home. If 
I do not look after myself, no one else will. 
But if everyone were thus minded, it is easy 
to see that the world would become a cock-pit, 
a wild beasts' den of struggling, tearing, 
greedy individualities. Perhaps in essence it 
is something of the kind, but we should be 
chary of admitting it, because the chances are, 
with everyone pulling in a different direction, 
that no one would get anything he wants. In 
1 1 §s other 



other words, the world would be chaos. But, 
as an individual, I want to know what is to 
be my ideal. Selfishness or Altruism? Am 
I benevolently to think of others, or with nar- 
row prudence to think only of myself? It 
makes a considerable difference, because until 
this question is fairly settled, I shall not know 
what "good" means as distinguished from 
"evil." Is a good man one who thinks of 
others, or one who thinks of himself? Both, 
of course: but we want to know the proper 
proportion and which is the dominant in- 
fluence. The contrast is admirably illustrated 
by the philosophy of Nietzsche and Christian- 
ity. For the first, morality means each for 
himself and the devil take the hindermost. 
For the second, blessed are the peacemakers, 
and the humble in heart and those who are 
kindly and who forgive. 

% ( IV. ) And then, whatever one may make of 
life or whatever may be the distinctive colours 
it may wear, for all alike comes the inevitable 
hour when life itself must be surrendered. 
The solemn ordeal of Death casts its shadows 
before, and the gloomy portals that we must 
enter, when our predestined moment strikes, 
make us shiver with a sense of fruitlessness 
12 



and despair. For what valuable fruit can we 
gather in so brief a span? And if something 
has been attempted, something done to earn 
the night's repose, cut bono? The day is 
finished, so far as we are concerned, and the 
night cometh when no man can work. Such 
thoughts as these trouble some men more than 
others, but they must present themselves to 
every child of Adam — now and again, at all 
events, when he is low-spirited and things have 
gone badly with him. What is Death? We 
passionately crave to know. Is it just the 
crumbling of the atoms which constitute our 
individuality into nothingness? Or is it, 
though the epilogue to our mundane life, the 
preface to some other life? And who will an- 
swer our question for us? Not the Pope, nor 
the Archbishop of Canterbury, nor the Chief 
Rabbi! They know no more about the mat- 
ter than we do. They are, it is true, the pro- 
fessors of their respective creeds, and they can 
give us the traditional and conventional solu- 
tions of the problem. The great hold which 
Religion has over the average man is precisely 
this — that it consoles and fortifies the shrink- 
ing and terrified human creature, when he 
feels himself to be moribund. If he can be- 
13 %lieve 



lieve its dogmas, all is well. But many per- 
sons cannot believe, either on scientific or 
philosophical grounds, or because they know 
something of the history of the Creeds. And 
if that be the case, then they must face the 
tremendous dilemma in their own way. 
Either Death puts an end to conscious life or 
it does not. In the first case, the constituent 
elements of our body, which for some few 
years cohered to form the "self," are dispersed 
and go back again to the bosom of Nature to 
be worked up possibly into new shapes, but 
at all events to the utter destruction of the self. 
In the second case there is something in us 
which is untouched by physical decay — which 
leaves the decaying body to rot in its own man- 
ner, while itself survives. Supposing that we 
assent to the separate existence of the soul, 
what then? What becomes of it after death? 
Does its survival mean that our personal con- 
sciousness survives, so that we are recognisable 
individualities — Tom, Dick and Harry in a 
new sphere? Or does our spirit become 
merged in a universal spirit, the limited be- 
coming unlimited, the finite infinite, so that 
Tom, Dick and Harry cease to be distinct and 
lose themselves in God? You see, it makes 
14 



such a difference to us in this world which 
horn of the dilemma we accept. If our pres- 
ent life be all, if we have just our three-score 
years and ten to play with, and then nothing- 
ness — well, there will be no little justification 
for the hedonist and the libertine when he 
says, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we 
die." But if after this life, there is another 
one, and possibly a judgment seat, it is a vastly 
different matter. It behoves us to be careful 
in view of an unknown future, when the 
secrets of all hearts will be revealed. Perhaps 
this haunting dread of the End is the most 
agonising of all the problems which the Artist 
of Life has to face. "Oh wretched man that 
I am, who will deliver me from the body of 
this death?" 

% (V.) And yet, I don't know. It may be 
the most agonising, but it is not the most im- 
portant of our problems. Much the most 
momentous and significant question remains 
when we ask with intense and breathless anxi- 
ety how this world is governed. Is it by 
Chance or Fate or Natural Law, or by God? 
Suppose that we had to change our country 
and emigrate to a new and strange one. What 
is one of the earliest queries we should make? 
15 % Clearly 



Clearly we should want to know how the new 
country is governed, whether by an autocrat, or 
a constitutional king, or by a body of oligarchs, 
or by a democracy. It would make all the 
difference to our prospects. If we learnt that 
we had to pay heavy taxes to an irresponsible 
monarch and were always subject to his 
arbitrary will for any new exaction he chose 
to require of us, we should hesitate before we 
accepted the conditions. And if we were mer- 
chants, it would make a difference to us 
whether Free Trade or Protection were the 
habit of the country, just as to the ordinary 
citizen it makes a difference whether he is 
allowed to live his own life more or less as he 
pleases, or whether he is tied, hand and foot, 
by vexatious restrictions imposed on him by 
a tyrannous bureaucracy. Or again, if our 
immigrant learnt that there was no settled gov- 
ernment in the new country, but only an an- 
archical chaos, politely veiled under the titles 
of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, he would 
probably think twice before he committed 
himself and his savings to such a welter of in- 
discipline. 

% Now we are all of us citizens of the world, 
the grave contrast between us and the intend- 
16 



ing settler being that we have no right of 
choice and can live nowhere else. But it is 
certainly as important to us as to any immi- 
grant to ascertain how the world in which we 
have to live is governed. Perhaps we do not 
worry about the matter, mainly because we 
have become used to certain normal and 
regular conditions, and because, anyway, here 
we are and here we must remain. So long as 
the sun rises and sets with unfailing punctu- 
ality, so long as spring and summer, autumn 
and winter follow one another in an unchang- 
ing order, so long as we get sufficient oppor- 
tunities to secure bread and cheese, to make 
love or to make money, we refuse to trouble 
our heads about the constitution under which 
our existence is carried on. Directly, how- 
ever, there comes a break in our prosperity, 
or we get ill, or something occurs to change 
our thoughts from the smiling commonplaces 
of life to serious realities, then the problem 
confronts us, with an insistence not to be 
denied. Besides, from a moral and spiritual 
point of view — even if we overlook the physi- 
cal — it matters enormously how the world is 
governed. "Under which King, Bezonian? 
Live or Die!" For if the world is all due 
17 *to 



to Chance, to the fortuitous concourse of 
atoms, we are most assuredly aliens and 
strangers in a realm with which we have no 
sympathy and to which we are not akin. It 
upsets our reason to think that we are wholly 
subordinate to accident. And if we do not 
use the term Chance, but speak of Fate as the 
Supreme Governor, it comes to very much 
the same thing. For in that case we are 
slaves, and reasonable people resent conditions 
of servitude. An impersonal Nature is 
equally uncomfortable as a ruler. It is like 
being governed by some wonderful sausage 
machine, which always keeps time and pace 
and measure, and turns out its products with 
unfailing regularity. There is only one other 
hypothesis. Above Nature there may be a 
God, who is the Supreme Ruler, the Sovereign 
of the whole world. The ideal governor, no 
doubt, is a benevolent despot: unfortunately 
in our human sphere, despots are not usually 
benevolent, and benevolent men are not, as a 
rule, despots. All the better for us if we are 
in the hands of a divine governor, who may be 
an autocrat, but is also, ex hypothesi, reason- 
able and merciful. At such a footstool, we 
can kneel without fear or shame. 



V. TWO RIVAL THEORIES 
% HERE are a series of opposite and con- 
tradictory principles concerned with the ulti- 
mate constituent elements of a world-theory. 
I need scarcely say that a good many more 
might be added to them, if one had the space 
for adequate discussion. For instance, there 
is the problem of the existence of Evil — the 
solution of which cuts very deep into our 
theories about the world. And, of course, 
others besides. But I think I have taken 
fairly representative questions — those I mean, 
which, starting from the standpoint of the in- 
dividual, interest and concern him in wider 
concentric circles till they become synonymous 
with the nature of the Kosmos. And there is 
one obvious remark to be made about them. 
In all of the five, if we take one side of the 
dilemma, we get a consistent world-theory 
which is absolutely antithetical to that we ar- 
rive at, if we take the other side. 
% Thus, if we adopt the strictly materialistic 
position we get a series of propositions of the 
following kind: (i) The world is what an 
active, impersonal Nature has made it in ac- 
cordance with a blind, unintelligent striving 
onwards to an unknown goal. (2) Death is 
19 *the 



the dissolution of certain fortuitously as- 
sembled molecules and atoms, which happen 
to have cohered to form a given individual. 
Inasmuch as the individual is nothing but this 
collection of atoms, together with the forces 
generated by such collection, he dies for ever 
when the collection is dispersed. (3) The 
main business — perhaps the sole business— of 
the individual is to look after himself. Mor- 
ality is only a disguised and politic selfishness. 
Egotism is the only gospel. (4) And I am 
not to be blamed. Because self-preservation 
is an instinct, it belongs to the fixed order of 
things, and I can no more help being selfish 
than I can help being born in a certain place 
and possessing hungry appetites. Freedom 
of the will is a delusion. (5) Lastly, if I ask 
what is the essential condition, the sine qua 
non, of individuality, it is my body, repre- 
senting a given concourse of material elements 
different from other concourses. Soul, not 
being a material thing, is nothing. It is an 
image, a metaphor, based on breath (^e5//a). 
The five propositions hold together as a 
possible world-theory. 

% But now take the opposite propositions. 
We will put them down in the same order 
20 



as the preceding ones: (i) The world is gov- 
erned by Reason, Intelligence, Design: or if 
we like to phrase it so, by God as Sovereign 
Ruler of the Universal order of things, (ii) 
So far as I have any share in Reason and In- 
telligence, I belong to the spiritual order, and 
have some communion with the Divine Spirit. 
Therefore, though my body decays, my soul 
does not. Soul is of the essence of immortal 
things. It can not die. In what form it 
survives, is, of course, another question, (iii) 
My business in the world is to do my duty as a 
member of a commonwealth, a society of 
human beings, the very object of whose union 
is to promote the general welfare. Hence to 
be selfish is to be a pariah, a rebel. I must 
not speak so greedily about my rights : I ought 
to speak of my duties. The beginnings of 
an intelligent moral code rest on altruism, 
(iv) If a man is to be moral, he must be a 
responsible human creature : if he is to be 
responsible, he must exercise self-control: 
and if he can exercise self-control he must to 
this extent, at all events, be free. He cannot 
be a slave. Of course freedom does not mean 
license or the indulgence of chance vagaries, 
but a reasonable power of self-direction, (v) 
21 %And 



And lastly. The essence of the individual is 
that he is a spirit. His body changes every 
seven years. His soul develops but it does not 
change — a fact to which memory and recollec- 
tion (passive and active memory) both testify. 
Looking back over what has been said, we 
see that these five propositions also make up a 
consistent world-theory, which can be con- 
trasted with the former. If that be called 
naturalism, or positivism or materialism, this 
will be known as spiritualism or idealism. 
% Now it is no part of my business to be 
dogmatic. Who could be in dealing with 
points at once so important and so abstruse? 
I hope that I have put the issues before my 
reader with cool neutrality and fairness, al- 
though sometimes an expression or an adjec- 
tive is apt to escape one which reveals partisan- 
ship. Let me also say that according to such 
experience as one has gained of one's fellow- 
men, it does not seem necessary to make an 
absolute choice between the two schemes as 
though they were mutually exclusive. Logic- 
ally, I think, they are absolutely exclusive : but 
men are inconsistent creatures, especially in 
their half-conscious and half-realised beliefs. 
You will therefore find that certain views out 
22 



of the one scheme are held in combination with 
some out of the other. A man will say, for in- 
stance, that he believes in the Divine Govern- 
ment of the world and yet does not believe 
in the Freedom of the Individual will. That, 
indeed, is a very common attitude, and a rigor- 
ous Calvinism, which upholds in its strict form 
Predestination (that is to say, a divine deter- 
mination of each one of our careers from birth 
onwards) obviously leaves no room for in- 
dividual liberty of choice. I am bound to say 
that the scientific arguments against the free- 
dom of the will are exceedingly strong; and or- 
dinary experience of human beings in their 
common moods and their customary life sug- 
gests that at all events they are the unresisting 
victims of habit, if not of necessity. Nor is it 
the bad and the worthless who appear to be 
most bound by their antecedents : it is the good, 
whose course of conduct can be the more easily 
foretold. I imagine that it would be a very 
poor compliment to an upright and loyal 
citizen, if you said that you could not be cer- 
tain how he would act in a given contingency. 
And yet this is what you ought to say, if you 
carry to its logical conclusions the doctrine 
of volitional freedom. 

23 % But 



*% But this is not the only instance of an 
amalgamation of opposite points of view. 
Some of the most clear-headed men I know, 
who would not for worlds think that an in- 
telligent selfishness was the only morality, or 
that the Kosmos was the work of Chance or 
blind natural forces, yet honestly believe that 
death is the end — absolute and irretrievable— 
of the individual. To them the scientific ar- 
gument against immortality appeals with ir- 
resistible force. Life depends on a certain 
arrangement of material elements. When 
these elements are dispersed and disintegrated, 
there is an end of life. How can the soul 
survive when we only know of a soul, appar- 
ently indissolubly combined with a body and 
wholly dependent on corporeal functions? 
% As a matter of fact, most men are exceed- 
ingly disinclined to formulate their ulti- 
mate beliefs and therefore allow themselves all 
kinds of inconsistency. They refuse to ex- 
amine the ultimate bases of their creed; or, 
a still more ordinary phenomenon, they pro- 
fess a lip-service to a creed which has nothing 
in common with their actual life. Just as a 
number of respectable and fairly rational men 
and women will, when they go to church, join 
24 



in the Psalms and associate themselves with 
David's imprecations on his enemies — with all 
kinds of bloodthirsty expressions, such as 
"making children fatherless" and "dashing 
their heads against the stones" — so, too, with 
similar strangeness, most of us are a little like 
the grocer, who having asked his shop-assist- 
ant whether he had watered the vinegar and 
sanded the sugar, then bade him come to 
prayers. In other words, our daily life, com- 
mercial or social, has nothing to do with our 
professed beliefs. The first has a strictly 
utilitarian basis, probably. The second is sup- 
posed to rest on spiritual foundations. Nor 
must you blame men too severely for this or 
any other inconsistency. It is very difficult, 
perhaps impossible, to be strictly logical. It 
seems fantastic, almost ungentlemanly, to 
carry out abstruse theories to their legitimate 
conclusion. Ultimate beliefs may be safely 
left alone, or perhaps taken out of their strong- 
box for a Sabbath day's airing, being carefully 
put back to their seclusion for at least six days 
of the week. We are all like this, remember 
— and no one has a right to cast a stone at his 
neighbour. But because there are times, 
which come to the middle-aged, when the im- 
25 tifc portance 



portance of ultimate beliefs grows with the 
passing of the years and it seems to be an im- 
perative duty no longer to halt between differ- 
ent opinions, but to make up one's mind once 
and for all — therefore have I tried to write 
this book. The young, equally with the old, 
want to clear their minds of cant and face 
important issues without blenching. It is for 
them, too, that this book is written — indeed 
for all who will allow themselves an hour or 
two's seriousness. Certainly, we will have no 
arbitrariness or dogmatism in the matter. 
Those, who know best how uncertain are these 
metaphysical concepts, how difficult to fix in 
their precise connotation and their potential 
range, will be the first to accept modesty and 
honesty as their becoming attitude. After all, 
it is better in the presence of the great world- 
riddles to combine earnestness with modesty 
than to be indifferent like the agnostic, or os- 
tentatiously resigned like the follower of 
Comte. 

VI. IDEALISM AND 
MATERIALISM 

% I DESIRE to eschew technical terms of 
philosophy, so far as is possible, but as I called 
26 



the two contrasted world-theories, Idealism 
and Materialism, I must make the meaning of 
the two expressions clear. The second almost 
explains itself. It is assumed that by means 
of the ordinary avenues of sense, combined 
with thought-processes of reasoning and judg- 
ment, we get close to the Real. This Real is 
further discovered to have a material character 
composed of atoms, molecules, electrons and 
what not — the real stuff (5^) out of which 
the world is made. Thus all Nature has a 
material basis, and we ourselves, though a late 
product of a slowly evolving Nature, have 
equally a material basis. The real thing about 
us as it is about the world, is that body, soul, 
and spirit, thoughts, emotions, imaginations, 
fancies, are all, in the last resort, to be analysed 
into forms, combinations, transformations of 
molecules and motion, matter and energy. 
% Idealism is not quite so easy to define 
clearly. What is the main principle of Ideal- 
ism? It may be put thus. Idealism uses self- 
knowledge or the essence of the knowing mind, 
as the key with which to unlock the secret of 
the world. What is it that we know best? 
Ourselves, clearly. What 'is the most certain 
thing in the world? The fact of my con- 
27 % sciousness 



sciousness of myself — or as Descartes puts it, 
"Je pense, done je suis," I exist because I think. 
Observe — and that is a second step — that we 
are much more sure of ourselves in conscious- 
ness than we are of any external fact. If we 
ask why, the answer is plain. How do we 
become aware of the external fact? By means 
of our sense-perception, or in other words— 
by means of certain modes of our own con- 
sciousness. The object which I observe is of 
a certain colour, red, green, white: it is hard 
or soft: it tastes sweet or sour. Every one of 
these qualities which I give the object are, if 
we analyse them, merely the affirmations of my 
perceptive senses. They do not exist in the 
thing: they exist in me. That — very frag- 
mentarily explained, for I do not want to enter 
into metaphysical discussion — is the idealistic 
analysis, which leads up to the startling con- 
clusion that what I call "real" and "external" 
is the construction of my own mind. General- 
ise the statement, and we reach the principle 
that self-knowledge is the key to the under- 
standing of the world. The world, in fact, 
arises in consciousness. Thought, spirit, mind 
— these are the ultimate realities; not matter 
and the atom. And from this it follows that 



it is in virtue of our self-conscious thought that 
we are in tune with the universe, and that it is 
our spirit which holds converse with God, the 
Universal Spirit, the Ruler of the Kosmos. 

VII. WHY IDEALISM IS TO BE 
PREFERRED 

% WELL — how long are we to halt between 
two opinions? If Jahveh be the God, let us 
worship him, but if Baal, then let us serve him. 
In my use of the old Biblical phrase, I have 
already revealed my own partisanship. For 
myself, I can hardly understand how any one, 
who surveys the course of the world's history 
and the history of religions ; who feels the in- 
spiration of Music and Painting and Poetry; 
who looks into his own breast and observes his 
own intimate tendencies and the fundamental 
qualities of his nature; who watches the bond 
which cements states and keeps human fellow- 
ship together; and who knows what it is that 
makes life sweet and sane and endurable — I 
say, I cannot understand how anyone who has 
gone through even a tithe of such discipline, 
can doubt that the secret heart of the world is 
Spirit and not Matter, however cunningly 
manipulated. You can dress up matter in any 
29 % fashion 



fashion you please, you can so utterly trans- 
form it, that it appears capable of arrogating 
the prerogatives of a living soul, you can even, 
if you are a materialist, so bewitch and sophis- 
ticate your intelligence as to say "Thought is 
a function of Matter" and believe that such a 
sentence has some meaning. But at the end, 
your dressed-up King is still plebeian Matter, 
and no royal ichor flows in his veins. I am 
quite aware that rhetoric is not argument, and 
I therefore lay no stress on such passionate or 
emotional advocacy as I may be capable of. 
The fact remains, however, that the great 
fabric of our Kosmos looks as if it were con- 
structed out of spirit-stufT, not out of material 
atoms: while, if we even dimly comprehend 
what is involved in the assertion "Ideas govern 
the World," we shall see in it a fresh argument 
for Idealism. The triumphant progress of 
Science is a victory of intelligence and ideas. 
All the arts appeal to the conscious aptitudes 
of a thinking self. Music, through the ear, 
acquires its ultimate meaning and significance 
in the brain. Poetry, above all, is the struc- 
ture of a creative imagination, bubbling out of 
an internal source within a man's self. And 
Genius? Genius is a fairy, irresponsible, un- 
30 



predictable gift and grace of the gods, which, 
like the wind, cometh when and how it listeth 
and is a supreme vindication of the autocracy 
of Spirit. To what can the materialist point? 
To the enormous value of scientific discovery, 
no doubt, which made the nineteenth century 
so marvellous a period in the world's history. 
Yet the very processes by which his victories 
have been won are purely mental and espe- 
cially the use of hypothesis, which is mostly 
imagination and clever guessing. 
% Let me assume, at all events, that you and 
I are enlisted on the side of the idealist, and 
that we are ready to accept his analysis and 
his world-theory, leading up to the conclu- 
sion that the great secret of the Kosrhos is the 
predominancy of Spirit. And now see what 
an advantage we have, when having in what- 
ever fashion constructed our Science of Life, 
we turn to the Art of Life. Here are we, 
creatures, as we say, of a day, who nevertheless 
possess intelligence, discover all we can about 
our environment, and feel the deepest interest 
in these great structures of the human mind, 
Art, Science and Religion. We are quite 
aware that life is a fragile thing, and that we 
are at the mercy of accidents. Fate may seem 
31 %to 



to be against us; something in our own nature 
— perhaps the survival of an animalism be- 
longing to long past ages of our struggle up- 
wards — is, often or perpetually, opposing and 
checkmating our best impulses: while if we 
look around us, we are oppressed by the 
misery, the poverty, the squalor that are all 
around us. Nevertheless, being intelligent 
ourselves, we believe in a God of intelligence, 
and being humanly kind and benevolent, we 
believe in a God who is divinely kind and 
benevolent. Or, if we may not go so far as 
this, and it is a point to which I shall return 
presently, we believe in an ultimate Power 
not ourselves, a Universal Spirit, who makes 
for righteousness, whose action tends that way, 
and is therefore sympathetic with the highest 
aims of humanity. God, or the Universal 
Spirit, is, we dare to affirm, the presupposition 
alike of our knowledge, our morality and the 
world at large. The presupposition of knowl- 
edge, because, as our knowledge grows, it 
gradually absorbs more and more of that 
rounded and perfect orb of omniscience, which 
is God. The presupposition of morality, be- 
cause the ultimate idea of goodness towards 
which we dimly strive is only another name 
32 



for God. And the presupposition of the 
world itself, because all evolution and progress 
being ex hypothesi an intelligent process, tends 
towards a certain end, which we take to be the 
ultimate purpose of God. I can imagine how 
the agnostic and the materialist, the one with 
his indifference and the other with his lofty 
resignation, scorn what seems to them our 
sentimental rhapsody. But they must not call 
us illogical, if from the standpoint of Idealism 
we accept not only efficient causes (or rather 
the relation of phenomena to one another) but 
also final causes. For the great end of all 
things is something which Intelligence has 
designed and towards which therefore it pa- 
tiently works. We only see part of the pat- 
tern, doubtless: but, at all events, it seems to be 
a pattern and not a chaotic collection of loose 
threads. The God, who gives us sunsets, and 
flowers and the sweet consolations of beauty in 
colour and form, is the same God who gives 
us Goodness and Truth. Veritably, he is a 
trinity, the God of Art, the God of Science, 
the God of Morality. In this last high 
analysis, Beauty is Truth and the Good is at 
once beautiful and true. 



33 



VIII. PAIN AND EVIL 

% AND now let us grapple with those awful 
shadows, Pain and Death, which make life so 
treacherous and so vain. I take it that the 
majority of us are not Stoics, but Epicureans. 
It is not our mood to wrap ourselves up in a 
lofty disdain of all the accidents that may be- 
fall us: we are not strong enough for that. 
The real Stoic is a fine creature, but he is cold 
and austere and not quite human: and his 
creed is a chilly and deliberate disregard for 
just those things which are of the very essence 
of life. The Epicurean of the finer type, such 
as apparently was Epicurus himself, is a much 
more human thing, because he recognises that 
man naturally craves for pleasures and happi- 
ness, though he insists that we must discrim- 
inate between our pleasures and choose only 
the most satisfying ones. He does not meet 
Pain and Death with a direct negative. He 
does not commit himself to the paradox that 
to the wise man they do not exist. Alas, they 
are real enough, as our shrinking nerves 
testify! He therefore tries to make the best 
of such sunny satisfaction as life affords and 
thinks as little as he can of the deep marginal 
shadows. But we must remember that we are 
34 



going to add Idealism to our Epicureanism 
and that instead of the Epicurean Gods who 
exist in their own celestial region caring noth- 
ing for what goes on in our terrestrial sphere, 
we insist on having our own conception of a 
Universal Spirit, who is the God and Father 
of us all. 

% The Mystery of Evil is wrapped up with 
our notion of what God is and can hardly be 
discussed separately. Meanwhile, so far as 
Pain is concerned, the one thing that is abso- 
lutely certain is that, in some intimate way, it 
is indissolubly mixed with our growth in 
knowledge and our growth in morality. We 
may regret that such is the case; we may im- 
agine an order of things, so cunningly ar- 
ranged that we could learn without suffering 
and be good without the temptation of Evil. 
But that is not our Universe: and what is the 
good of kicking against the pricks? We have 
to deal with things as they are and as they will 
be. Why therefore should we deceive our- 
selves? Unless it is tried in the fire of suffer- 
ing, virtue is a poor anaemic thing. Even in- 
nocence and chastity are purely negative ex- 
cellencies. In such cases ignorance, so far 
from being bliss, is a defect, almost a sin. 
35 



IX. DEATH 

% BUT Death? Ah, that is a different mat- 
ter. No one can console himself by saying 
that Death is educative, or that it does us good, 
or that it adds to our knowledge. It notori- 
ously does none of these things. It seems like 
a blank wall, which shuts us off from every- 
thing which interests us, which puts a period 
to our usefulness, which flatly negates all that 
we are here for. And it is no good to shut 
our eyes, as an ordinary Epicurean might do, 
or hide our heads in the sand and pretend that 
the great Hunter does not see his prey. What 
are we to say, pursued by so remorseless an 
Enemy? 

% I remark, in the first place, that a sheer 
sense of contrast magnifies our apprehensions. 
Here, in the vivid sunlight, with the red blood 
bounding along our veins, and the faces of our 
friends around us and a thousand interests 
pressing upon our alert attention, it seems an 
awful thing to die. Gloom instead of radi- 
ance, pain instead of health, solitude instead 
of companionship — could any contrast be 
more tremendous? But God, or Nature, is 
good to us. As we gradually approach those 
shadowy avenues which lead to the grave, we 

36 



lose, little by little, our keen consciousness of 
life. The eyes have grown dim, the pulse is 
weaker, the almond-tree flourishes, desire fails 
— because man is going to his last home and 
soon the mourners will be about the streets. 
Compare death with what you are now, and 
the difference is appalling. But not if you 
compare death with what you will be then. 
It will then wear much more the face of your 
nurse, another and greater nurse soothing you 
to sleep. Ask those who have been near the 
gateless barrier, and whose faces have been 
brushed by death's wing. I remember when 
I nearly died of typhoid, I was very still and 
I only wanted to be left alone. Whether I 
turned one way and lived, or turned another 
way and died, it did not seem to me to make 
much difference: and when my nurse asked 
me — and her voice seemed to me to come from 
an illimitable distance — whether she should 
wake and call my relations, I shook my head. 
I did not dread being alone — it is the solitude 
of death which alarms some persons — I 
wanted to be alone. There was only just a 
tiny step to be taken, a thin partition to be 
pushed through. And it did not seem to mat- 
ter anyway. Like Hezekiah, the man who is 
37 * vaguely 



vaguely conscious that his last hour has come, 
naturally and inevitably turns his face to the 
wall. This is what the philosopher meant, 
when he told us not to fear death because 
a when we are, death is not, and when death is, 
we are not." It seems a frigid, abstract sort 
of thing to say, but it contains a deep truth. 
% Of course, there are some deaths, full of 
agony, and we cannot bear to think of them. 
But they are not many in the total sum, and 
pain itself is not so dreadful when our vitality 
is reduced, almost to nothingness. All suffer- 
ing is relative. 

% I do not wish to touch on the consolations 
of Religion, because this essay is not concerned 
with creeds or theological dogmas. But still 
I may remark that the Idealist, who not only 
believes in an Absolute Spirit or Universal 
Self-Consciousness but envisages it in the form 
of a God, the ruler of this universe, has a deep 
source of consolation in the consciousness that 
he is in Divine hands. He, too, like the 
Psalmist can say: "Though I walk through 
the valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear 
no evil: for thou art with me, thy Rod and 
thy Staff they comfort me." He cannot say 
it with quite the same unreasoning faith, for 

38 



his belief is conditioned by his reason. Yet if 
this universe is divinely guided to some pre- 
destined end, and, how or why we know not, 
its progress involves the death of the indi- 
vidual — to make way, we will say, for his 
successor — then he must accept this as part of 
the Divine plan. When the Kosmos of things 
was first set going, it began its triumphal 
march in joy. Then, as Job says, "the morn- 
ing stars sang together, and the sons of God 
leaped for joy." Whatever it was which was 
then conceived and brought to light, it was 
accompanied by happiness. And shall not 
the same happiness — the joy of the sons of 
God — follow it step by step as it slowly 
evolves, shaping itself to some perfect goal? 
And the death of the individual — the death of 
countless generations of individuals — is part 
of the plan. The great Spirit overlooks the 
whole progress, and we must be content. 
% Of course to those who are confident that 
something is to come after death, some other 
and better sphere (or perhaps a fresh cycle of 
existence, if we accept the idea of metamor- 
phosis) the grave loses much of its terror. 
Socrates, when he was preparing himself to 
meet his end, said that Death was either a 
39 * sleep 



sleep and therefore the best of sleeps, or else 
a transference to happy isles where he might 
be privileged to meet all the heroes of the 
olden time. Plato believed alike in the Im- 
mortality of the Soul and in a series of trans- 
migrations : and indeed if we believe that the 
soul survives the dissolution of the body, there 
is no logical reason why it should not have 
existed in another form before birth. 
% But I remark that, as far as I am aware, 
the great moral teachers of the world have 
been inclined to discourage speculations as to 
a future world. Socrates said very little on 
the subject and so too, I think, did Gautama 
himself. Christ notoriously checked curios- 
ity. "Think ye that those on whom the tower 
of Siloam fell were sinners more than others? 
I tell you no, but unless ye repent, ye shall 
likewise perish." "Work out your own salva- 
tion in fear and trembling." Or again, when 
pressed by inimical controversialists on the 
subject of Jewish marriage and the necessity 
of a younger brother wedding his deceased 
brother's widow, Christ remarked, "Ye err, 
not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of 
God." For in the great hereafter "they 
neither marry nor are given in marriage, but 
40 



are as the angels of heaven." In other words, 
the conditions of the future world are so dif- 
ferent from ours, that it is useless to speculate 
about them. Christ seems to suggest that our 
great business is to do our best in the present 
sphere, and not worry ourselves about the 
next. Have faith and trust in the power of 
God. 

X. SPIRITUALISM 

<% AND that is why the ordinary so-called 
"Spiritualism" seems such a foolish thing. 
Because, I suppose, many people find it so 
difficult not to speculate about the hereafter, 
they have tried to evoke spirits and wrest some 
answer from them. And even when with the 
aid of mediums and all sorts of thaumaturgic 
professors, they have evoked the shadowy 
presences of the departed, the spirits have no 
answer to give. So many efforts have been 
made by earnest seekers of the Psychical So- 
ciety and it has all been so piteously fruitless ! 
If it consoles a man to believe that some of his 
dead, dear ones have, through the instru- 
mentality of a medium, been permitted to 
speak to him, who are we to say him nay? 
Heaven knows we want consolation, when we 
41 % watch 



watch some beloved face fading from our ken, 
and wonder how it will be with the departed, 
and whether he will ever think of us again in 
all our troubles and our sins. But it is wiser 
not to dally with so-called spirits. A man 
loses something of his moral and mental fibre, 
when he flirts with superstition and allows 
himself to be cajoled. It is better to try to 
do one's duty in this world and be content. 
^s To do one's duty! That is no easy task — 
easier perhaps for the believer in a definite 
creed, who supposes himself to be acting under 
the great taskmaster's eye, more difficult for 
us who acknowledge the supremacy of a great 
Spirit or Universal Self-Consciousness, but are 
loth to envisage him or it as a kind of peda- 
gogue. What is it that makes it so hard to 
let our better self emerge, which seems to be 
an obstacle to our higher ambition and a defi- 
nite hindrance to the realisation of good? 
And, if we recognise that there is this sort of 
struggle between our real self and something 
adverse and inimical, how are we to explain 
it? How, especially, are we to explain it in 
reference to our idea of God? Of course, 
there have been many answers in the course 
of the history of human thought. Ahriman 
42 



and Ormuzd, the good spirit and the evil 
spirit: God and the Devil struggling for vic- 
tory in the world and disputing with each 
other the possession of man's soul: the Idea 
of Good and the resistance of Matter — these 
are some explanations taken at random. In 
our modern world, which dislikes the ac- 
knowledgment of a fundamental dualism be- 
tween good and evil elements, the interpreta- 
tion of our difficulty is made to turn on human 
evolution. Man has had a long history; he 
has been striving upwards through many 
forms ; only within a few centuries, relatively 
speaking, has he emerged, or wrestled him- 
self free, out of his material swaddling-clothes 
and become veritably a man. Naturally, 
therefore his past is always dragging him 
backward and putting chains on his aspiring 
spirit. The evil of which he complains is 
the heritage of past ages of slow development: 
it is the crust and slough of animalism and 
materialism; the hole of the pit whence he 
was digged. He was once a monkey and 
something lower. Now he has attained to 
man's stature, but his monkeyhood clings to 
him. Even in his consciousness, there is, as 
psychology now maintains, an unconscious 
43 % substratum, 



substratum, the deposit of experience long 
since gone through, a "subliminal conscious- 
ness" as it is called, a consciousness below the 
threshold, which testifies to the past not only 
of himself, but of the race to which he be- 
longs. 

% Whether such an explanation satisfies or no 
will depend on the predilections of the in- 
dividual. It is undoubtedly plausible, but it 
leaves God out of the business and ignores the 
question of our responsibility. For clearly 
we are not responsible for the past history of 
man's evolution and it is no fault of ours that 
we were once arboreal apes with all the ape- 
like vices. It is, in fact, if we analyse it, a 
fatalistic creed. We are born so and so — 
with a nature and character that has come 
down to us from bygone generations. How 
then can we control what we do? Heredity 
enchains us, evolution makes us slaves. And 
just as when we were monkeys, we could not 
help acting as monkeys, so now, though we 
may have become men, we cannot help still 
acting frequently as monkeys, through the 
sheer tyranny of past monkeyhood. It is a 
charmingly easy fashion of relieving ourselves 
of all ethical obligation and it agrees admir- 
44 



ably with the modern notion that men are 
puppets or automata. We pat ourselves on 
the back (though we have no logical right to 
do so) when we do well: and when we do ill, 
it is all the fault of heredity or the subliminal 
consciousness of those monkey ancestors of 
ours. But what exactly do we mean by "do- 
ing well"? And whence have we obtained 
our conception of "the good" as distinct from 
"the evil"? 

XL GOD 

•% LET us approach the problem in a differ- 
ent way, and go back to the very roots of the 
matter. We have acknowledged in our 
world-theory the supremacy of a Universal 
Spirit or Divine Self-Consciousness, as the 
only key to unlock the "riddle of this painful 
earth." And we do not hesitate to call it God, 
without necessarily accepting all the implica- 
tions of Theology. Very well. And now, 
what is the relation in which God stands to the 
Universe? How do you and I, as ordinary 
thoughtful men, conceive of the situation? I 
will be bound to say, that according to our 
customary moods — that is to say, without 
sophisticating ourselves by any philosophical 
45 % analysis — 



analysis — we suppose that God, after having 
created the world and given, as it were, the 
first push to it, then superintends its subse- 
quent working, just as the Captain stands on 
the bridge and superintends the working of 
the steamship. In other words, the Divine 
architect — whether we are going to regard 
him also as a Providence or not — is distinct 
from the world and stands outside it, just as 
the Captain stands outside of, and is distinct 
from, his ship. We can only use simple hu- 
man analogies in this connection. Let us do 
so without any fear of being charged with 
"anthropomorphism," for the simple reason 
that whether we like it or not, we have no 
other way, except a human way, of approach- 
ing the problem. We interpret what goes on 
in the mind of a dog by what goes on in our 
own minds. And we have no other means of 
interpreting something infinitely higher than 
ourselves than by the same human measure- 
ment and appreciation. God, then, we as- 
sume, from a position outside the Universe, 
directs and controls the working of the vast 
machine which he originally called into being. 



4 6 



XII. MONISM 
tifc WELL — that is what, philosophically, is 
called Dualism, and whether or not it be the 
simple human way of regarding the matter, 
it is fiercely combated by those who style them- 
selves Monists. How, they ask, can you rec- 
ognise such a distinction between God and 
the Universe? If something stands outside 
God, as distinct from him, then he is not uni- 
versal — because there is something else besides 
God, namely the world. Moreover, the some- 
thing else is clearly a limitation of his power, 
an obstacle which he has to control, or which 
would be an obstacle if in his foreknowledge 
he did not obviate its resistance. Therefore 
your God is not omnipotent. He is like the 
Jahveh of the Hebrews, whose designs are 
checkmated by the subtlety of Satan. The 
only theory, they urge, which can be satisfac- 
tory to our intelligence is the recognition of a 
single ultimate principle — Monism, in short. 
And that carries with it as a consequence, a 
belief in Pantheism. Pantheism is the ac- 
knowledgment that God and the Universe are 
one and the same — that God is in the Universe, 
not outside it, and that the Kosmos as a whole 
is precisely what we mean by God. 

47 *The 



^s The drawback is that though we have satis- 
fied our intellectual demand for a single ul- 
timate principle, and thus attained to the kind 
of metaphysical structure which looks rounded 
off and complete and self-supporting, we have 
not satisfied our ordinary conception of in- 
dividuality. For us, after all, the main thing 
we want to understand is how we come to be, 
each with our own personal interests and 
duties, and how we stand related to the uni- 
verse of things. Now what is the "prin- 
cipium individuationis" in a Pantheism, such 
as Spinoza's? It is really very difficult to be 
sure that there is such a thing. For as soon 
as I ask what I am, I have to answer that I 
am a fragment of one form of the Universal 
Substance — so far as my spirit is concerned — 
while I am equally a fragment of the other 
form of the Universal Substance — so far as my 
body is concerned. And that does not seem to 
explain the essential characteristic of myself, 
that I am one separate individual. And, even 
if we assume that somehow or other in the 
midst of the great enveloping All, room is 
found for distinct personalities, how can such 
creatures have a duty to perform, and a moral 
responsibility resting on their shoulders? 

48 



The fact is, of course, that every system of 
Monism as such sacrifices the individual for 
the sake of preserving the logical unity of the 
whole: it is so anxious to provide us with its 
single ultimate principle that it tends to de- 
stroy all the picturesque and complicated va- 
riety of life. We may picture it to ourselves 
in another way. According to some theories 
we are received after our mortal existence into 
a Universal Consciousness : the human spirit is 
resolved into the Universal Spirit: the finite 
becomes the infinite. Now let anyone try to 
imagine in accordance with this view of im- 
mortality how you and I are to remain recog- 
nisable personalities, how we can meet again 
the loved ones we have lost, how we can greet 
them as the human beings we remember and 
be greeted by them in turn. The thing is ob- 
viously impossible. The Universal obliter- 
ates the specific, the individual entity, in one 
dead all-embracing unity. It wipes out, as it 
were, the features of a face, and gives us in- 
stead the face — the latter being the generic 
norm or standard of all faces. In a photo- 
graph you can superimpose one face upon an- 
other, until you get to something vaguely like, 
but not actually representative of anyone of 
49 % the 



the individual faces, of which it is composed. 
This is the Universal which kills the particular. 
And in Pantheism, also, the Universal kills the 
particular. We, you and I are all unreal in 
such a system. We have not any specific ex- 
istence apart from the whole to which we be- 
long and in which we are swallowed up. 
Carried along on the general stream of things, 
swept into the vortex of an evolving Kosmos, 
whether we like it or no, whether we submit 
or whether we resist (but indeed resistance is 
impossible), what is the good of our pretend- 
ing to be self-directed, free, responsible agents, 
when we are only items in an immense Order 
or Universal scheme, which goes rolling on, 
whatever we may say to the contrary? It re- 
minds one of that pathetic hymn of Cleanthes : 
"Lead me O Zeus and you too Fate — and I 
will follow without delay. Even if, in my 
wickedness I should refuse, I shall have to 
follow all the same" (*)v dk fy diXw, xaxoz 
yevofjievoz, oudev jjttov i(po[iac). 
% Now it may suit some listlessly Epicurean 
natures to feel that inasmuch as all activity is 
useless, it is on the whole a comfortable theory 
to believe in Fatalism. But it assuredly does 
5o 



not suit men and women of a sturdier fibre: 
nor, if they are religiously minded, does it 
seem to them at all a plausible supposition that 
God should have made them thus helpless and 
yet require at their hands the pursuit of vir- 
tue. And what Good is, and, above all, what 
Evil is, it is very difficult to explain on Mon- 
istic principles. Evil has to be defined as 
negation or as shadows on a sunlit picture — 
at all events as something unreal. Now the 
one thing that for the ordinary man is certain 
about Evil is that it is not negative. Evil is 
itself essentially positive and real. Go to the 
man who is trembling under some great 
temptation, and tell him that the Evil which 
he both desires and dreads to do is a mere 
shadow or privation and therefore quite un- 
real, and listen to his reply. He will prob- 
ably tell you that Evil is unfortunately so real 
that he cannot escape from it — indeed that in 
his present case, it is much more real than the 
problematical good to which he ought to 
aspire. When Christ healed his patients, he 
expelled a devil — so real did Evil seem to 
him! And in the Lord's prayer, when we 
petition for deliverance from the Evil or the 
51 %Evil 



Evil One, it would be a strange substitute if 
we said, "Deliver us from what is negative and 
therefore unreal!" 

XIII. DUALISM 

% NO — I think, in our reconstruction of hu- 
man life, we must begin by recognising three 
realities — stubborn elements in our problem 
which we shall only ignore at our peril and 
subsequent discomfiture. In the first place, 
the individual is real — you, I, Tom, Dick and 
Harry are real — not phantasms which imagine 
themselves real. In the second place, God is 
real. Only by believing in the intimations of 
our own self-consciousness, we remember, did 
we rise through our own intelligence to the 
recognition of a Universal intelligence, to 
which — partly for convenience — we give the 
name of God. If therefore the individual is 
real, so too is the Absolute Spirit of God. 
Moreover the relations between the two are 
real relations, involving a definite progress in 
knowledge and a definite progress in morality. 
In knowledge the universal gradually reveals 
itself or unfolds itself, to the individual — that 
is what advance in knowledge means. And in 
morality, too, the absolute good gradually re- 
52 



3 



veals itself to the aspiring human soul, and so 
"God fulfils himself in many ways, lest one 
good custom should corrupt the world." In 
the third place, Good and Evil are real con- 
ceptions of real things. And if this admission 
is going to land us into Dualism, we must not 
be afraid of the bogey of a mere word. 
Perhaps, whatever the logicians and meta- 
physicians may say, Dualism is true, and 
not Monism. Perhaps it is not so abso- 
lutely necessary for our intelligence to de- 
rive everything from a single principle and 
to be dissatisfied with any scheme which 
falls short of this unity. At all events, if 
analysis, however ruthlessly pursued, leaves 
us at the last with two principals and not 
one, what are we to do but resign ourselves 
to the inevitable? 

% We shall see better what is involved in these 
admissions, if we turn to the conception of 
God. Logically and philosophically con- 
sidered, God is defined as the totality of Con- 
sciousness, Universal Self-Consciousness, Ab- 
solute Spirit. That means that he is the exact 
antithesis of all that we designate as material, 
spirit and matter being wide as the poles 
asunder. Morally considered, he is the Ab- 
53 % solute 



solute Good, or as Plato would term it, the 
Idea of Good — the exact antithesis of all that 
we designate as Evil. Theologically con- 
sidered, he is the All-knowing, the All-power- 
ful, the All-kindly, the All-willing, the All- 
just. Now it is clear that some of these at- 
tributes are not mutually consistent. If God 
wills everything, then he must also will Evil, 
and therefore he ceases to be good. Or again, 
if he knows everything he must know all the 
inequalities, injustices and miseries of the 
world, and therefore he ceases to be just. Or 
once more, if he is all-kindly he cannot also 
be all-powerful. Despite his active desire to 
be benevolent, there must be some restriction 
on his ability, his power: or else there would 
not be evil in the world. He can not will that 
we should suffer pain, or else he would not 
be benevolent. And yet we do suffer pain and 
injustice and therefore he can not be omnip- 
otent. Either he is omnipotent and there- 
fore there is no such thing as Evil: or else 
there is such a thing as Evil and therefore he 
is not all-powerful. We can not shake our- 
selves free from these puzzling antinomies, 
so long as we merely repeat the dogmas of a 
creed. Nor can we accept them as insoluble. 
54 



It is as though we should be so hypnotised by 
the sound of abstract, dignified terms (as I 
believe some theologians are) that we begin 
to talk of "the high and noble music" of the 
Athanasian Creed, without any care or thought 
as to whether the dogmas make sense or non- 
sense. 

% If we turn to the logical or metaphysical 
definitions, we see at once what the dilemma 
is. There is an Absolute Spirit on the one 
hand: and there is Matter, or if we like to 
say so, the World, on the other hand. The 
difference between the two conceptions, Spirit 
and Matter, may be purely formal, not real. 
It may be a merely logical distinction not cor- 
responding to actuality. If we can accept 
this, then God may be the World and we can 
adopt the Pantheistic theory and be Monists. 
But the argument of the past pages is that we 
can not accept this — because Monism or 
Pantheism can not explain the existence of 
individuals, the meaning of moral responsi- 
bility and the reality of Evil. Very well, 
then we must take the other horn of the 
dilemma. We must say Spirit is one thing, 
Matter is another: God is one thing, the 
World is another: Good is one thing, Evil is 
55 0k another. 



another. And on his theory (which of course 
is Dualism) it will follow that there is some 
element in things which offers opposition and 
is an obstinate obstacle to the purposes and 
schemes which most accord with our intelli- 
gence and our highest nature. Spirit can not 
quite overcome the opposition of Matter: 
Good struggles not too successfully against 
Evil. God's purposes are qualified by the re- 
sistance of the World, the Flesh and the Devil. 
It is naturally the last proposition, which 
seems the most startling to the ordinary 
thinker, especially if he be religiously- 
minded. And yet it is plenarily confirmed by 
Hebraic doctrine, which constantly repre- 
sented Satan as having the power to negate 
the Divine Will: and, I think also, that it is 
not contradicted by Christianity. Think of 
the Lord's prayer. "Thy Kingdom come, thy 
will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven." 
If we pray for such a consummation, it clearly 
is not yet realised. We ask that God's pur- 
poses may be fulfilled, as though the work 
were by no means complete. And what about 
such expressions as "fellow- workers with 
God"? The assumption is that there is a big 
work yet to be done, in which we too must put 

56 



our shoulders to the wheel. All this can only 
be explained if we understand that the Divine 
Spirit is opposed by something which is not 
Divine: and inasmuch as we too are conscious 
in our own experience that our "best-laid 
schemes gang aft agley," owing to the ugly 
insurrection of our lower nature, we can 
sympathise and help in the divine work. 
Aristotle put the point rather differently in 
accordance with his theory of ecdo? and pop<pr), 
form and matter. Nature, he thought, 
wanted to achieve her perfect work in the 
most ideal way. But she had not the power 
always. Therefore it is an imperfect world, 

because $ (puces ^ouhvae /ikv 9 dX)H 06 duvavae 

— Nature wants, but cannot. The root- 
conception is the same though Aristotle talked 
of Nature, while we are talking of God. 
God wishes, but his will is negated by some- 
thing other than himself. And do not let us 
forget what all this implies in reference to the 
conception of what God is. We can allow 
that he is all-benevolent: we can even say that 
he is omniscient, though with some necessary 
limitations. But there is one thing we can 
not affirm. We cannot say that he is omnipo- 
tent. Over against Good stands Evil. Over 
57 <% against 




against God stands the opposition of Matter. 
% Does this sound irreverent doctrine? But 
observe that it is only another way of saying 
that the world progresses, that it is, and has 
been all along, slowly developing. In the 
upward climb of humanity, there has through- 
out been a struggle between the lower which 
drags back and the higher which pulls up- 
ward. This is the opposition between spirit 
and matter in another form. "The spirit 
warreth against the flesh, and the flesh 
warreth against the spirit, so that ye cannot 
do the things that ye would." And, though 
such a theory may make us profoundly melan- 
choly, when we observe how irritatingly slow 
the movement is, how often it is retarded and 
set back, remember for our consolation, that 
it is progress. E pur si muove. God is 
gradually fulfilling himself. It is not a hope- 
less struggle. It is not even a drawn battle. 
It is the dawning of victory. The confines 
of Evil are getting more restricted. The 
sphere of Good is expanding. 
4 But shall I be told that the doctrine that 
God is not omnipotent is not conducive to 
human morality? Is it not? On the con- 
trary, I should have thought that it supplies 

58 



the strongest of all grounds for doing right. 
So long as you believe that God not only wills 
to help you, but that he is all-powerful and 
therefore can do with you what he likes, it 
seems to me that the ordinary not too ener- 
getic individual will be inclined to fold his 
hands and very contentedly leave everything 
to God. But if you have to help God and 
become intimately aware that when you do 
wrong, you are, so far as lies in your power, 
negating his purposes, while by doing good 
you are, according to your capacities, actually 
forwarding his purposes and helping to their 
fulfilment — then you have every reason to 
bestir yourself. To be moral is to do some- 
thing, to struggle upward to the light, to ac- 
complish something helpful, to raise human- 
ity to higher levels. Can you have a better 
motive for all this than that you are one with 
God, seeing eye to eye with him, working to- 
wards the same great End? And that he 
actually stands in need of your help? Thus 
we can satisfy both sides of that apparently 
paradoxical Scripture : * Work out your own 
salvation ... for it is God who worketh in 
you." Or, as Robert Bridges, the Poet 
Laureate, says: 

59 % The 



The world is unto God a work of art, 

Of which the unaccomplished heavenly 
plan 

Is hid in life within the creature's heart, 
And for perfection looketh unto man. 



THE END 



60 




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